MISSING PERSON ALERT!! NAME: DERYL M.

A little more than three years ago my husband went missing. I wonder if you've seen him anywhere. My husband and my children's father cannot be found. We see someone who looks kinda similar to him occasionally and every once in a while we think it might be him. But those glimpses are only a very rare occasion.

You see, we miss him dearly. He was the perfect man to us. Honestly, if you are a longtime reader of my blog, you know I wrote many a post about me having the better end of the marriage. He rolled out the red carpet for me. We could talk for hours on end. He cherished me...or so I thought. We laughed so much together. My oldest daughter was 14 years old before she ever witnessed us have a serious disagreement/argument. We did absolutely EVERYTHING together. We didn't want to spend our time apart....EVER. We were best friends.

We would go to marriage seminars time after time and end up leaving because literally every single thing they said couples had problems with, we NEVER had those struggles. And everything they would encourage couples to do, we already did and then some. Marriage was so easy for us. It was wonderful. We were so happy. When I had cancer, he was my rock. He was absolutely amazing. 

Oh, and what an amazing father. He would put the kids to sleep every single night. It was such a big help and gave me such a great break. I loved not having that responsibility. He would talk to the girls and pray with them before they went to sleep. I loved hearing them say "Daddy, come pray with me!"

I remember one night he was out of town and he called to talk to me. He was in the same room as his boss. One of the girls happened to be right beside me when he called. She asked to talk to him when I was done and just like any other night, she asked him to pray for her and he wouldn't. He said it was because his boss was there. I had a major check in my spirit at that moment. That was a pretty big sign that the man he wanted us to believe he was and the man he really was were two very different people.

I still find myself sometimes in just complete shock and disbelief. How could it be possible for someone to "fake" a close to 20 year relationship? How could you just "pretend" to be happy? How could you go to church week in and week out like everything is fine? How could you minister to others and mentor them in their own marriages? How could you do unimaginable things while being the greatest husband on earth taking care of your sick wife?

I KNOW I have the gift of discernment. I KNOW many others who do as well. How did EVERYONE miss this? I guess we didn't really. It's kinda ironic...we have met tons of people. And ya know, especially in church, I would notice that not a lot of men (leaders especially) took to him. I always wondered why and would actually get very offended by this because I just never understood it.

After the many bombs dropped, I had different couples/people approach me and tell me they always knew something just wasn't right with him. They could never put their finger on it. Several people told me he had very clear signs he was in a full blown addiction. I must say, I am not upset that no one came to me with this information. I'm not upset because I would have never believed them.

I will say that if you see my posts on FB or read my blogs and you have certain "opinions" about me, I ask that you try to at least put yourself in my shoes and see things from my perspective where I am now and also where I've been. I have serious trust issues as you can imagine.

It is hard to recover from this kind of event. It is even harder watching your two daughters try to reason it all out and try to make any sense of it. Like I said, I lost my husband and my children lost their father. I have no doubt it would have been much easier to be widowed. At least then we would have known where he was.

So, if you happen to see him, would you let him know we're looking for him? And the scariest part about that is that we have no earthly idea if that person ever existed.